A Dusios In Ipswich
by Downside-Left
Summary: There is a Dusios in Ipswich, and the Knights of Camelot will save the day! Sort of. Sequel to 'Prince Bunny' and the ones that came before that.


Disclaimer: I own the laptop this is typed on, the first season of _Merlin_ on DVD, and a sub-par internet connection (if such a thing can _be_ owned). The rest, not mine.

Title: A Dusios in Ipswich

Rating: K+, maybe? I mean, there's a little bit of gore. Except not really. At all. Rated **T** for ridiculousness and a Dusios.

Summary: There is a Dusios in Ipswich, and the Knights of Camelot will save the day! Sort of.

A/N: Sequel to And I'm Not A Drunk, Hypothetically Speaking, and Prince Bunny. Unnecessary to read them, but good for the laughing. Set pre-season 4, post-season 3. Gwaine, Lancelot, Arthur and Gwen all know about Merlin.

A/N2: An anonymous reviewer for Prince Bunny asked why, if I'm a slash-fan (which, believe me, I am), I had Gwen be the one to break the spell with True Wuv's Kiss© instead of Merlin. I do ship Merthur, I truly do. But there is another special corner of my shriveled heart that ships Gwen/Arthur (don't ask how I reconcile the two pairings. Lancelot just sort of bounces in and out). I am also not very good at writing _light-hearted_ slash. When I try, it suddenly turns angsty and tortured (Dean/Castiel from _Supernatural_ in particular tends to spin that way), and these stories are meant to be funny, happy, silly things. If I tried to turn it into slash, it would have gone dark. I can write Gwen/Arthur as happy, though, so I went that way. But I hardcore ship Merthur. Hardcore. It's guy love, between two guys…. Except it's also gay love…. Damn _Scrubs_ with their wonderful songs getting stuck in my head! Anyway, this author's note has run on LONG enough, so I'll end it now with a warning that with the other stories I had plots in mind the whole time, but this one… off the cuff. I'm just goin' with it!

…

The small town of Ipswich, sixteen leagues north of the city of Camelot, was very quiet. Nothing ever happened there, and people were quite content with that. Every time a magical plague or creature infestation swept through Camelot, it would miss Ipswich entirely. Ipswich was quiet, and quiet was Ipswich.

Except for one Thursday afternoon in May.

The day dawned peacefully enough, with the birds singing and the dewdrops sparkling. The farmers were heading to the fields when the calm stillness was broken by panicked yelling coming from the forest.

"RUN! MOVE, MOVE MOVE!"

The farmers of Ipswich paused, staring curiously at the seven men bolting from the forest, all of them shouting at the top of their lungs.

"This is all your FAULT!" the blond man in the front roared over his shoulder as they charged past the farmers.

"No it's NOT!" the dark-haired, big-eared man yelled back, close on the first man's heels.

"Will you just MOVE?" the last man, wild-eyed and curly-haired, had his sword at the ready and kept shooting terrified glances over his shoulder.

The farmers did nothing except watch the men run by. Harold, the closest thing Ipswich had to a mayor, shrugged his shoulders a bit and continued on towards the fields, followed closely by the other men.

A few moments passed, and the quiet was broken, again, by something large bellowing from the trees that the strange men had come from. A giant _thing_ burst into the clearing, waving a man-sized axe over its head. It had the legs and tail of a goat, the torso of a man, and the head (and horns) of a bull. It snorted furiously at the farmers, and then ran off after the other men.

Harold shrugged again, and began hoeing the field. Mad monsters and strange men were no concern of his. Keep away from trouble and trouble will keep away from you. That was Ipswich's motto.

Meanwhile, in the center of Ipswich, Harold's wife Gertha was sweeping her front steps. Every other woman in Ipswich (except Mabel, who was visiting her sick mother the next town over) was doing the exact same thing, because they were all on the exact same schedule. That was just how things worked in Ipswich. Like clockwork. Everything good, everything normal.

Except for the seven men barreling down the road in front of her, chased by a part-goat, part-man, part-bull thing. That wasn't normal.

Gertha regarded the men and the monster with mild interest. Such things as these had never been seen in Ipswich before.

The seven men, six of whom were armed with swords, came to a halt in the town square (within easy viewing distance of Gertha's front porch), and turned to face the beast. The beast, in turn, charged straight at them, bellowing madly.

"On my count!" the blond man shouted, bracing himself. The five other sword-bearing men did likewise, while the last man, unarmed, took a deep breath.

"Three…" the blond counted as the monster advanced. "Two… One…. _Now!_"

To Gertha's slight surprise, the sword-bearing men all flung themselves out of the way, leaving the unarmed, skinny, big-eared man standing alone, facing the creature. The man flung up his arm and shouted something that Gertha couldn't understand. It sounded like a silly made-up language that children use. But it seemed to work; the beast was blown backwards, tumbling end over end and crashing into the house across the street, reducing it to rubble.

Gertha sighed a bit. That was Frederick and Mabel's house. They had just put new shutters on it. They were going to be very upset that it had been smashed.

The creature staggered upright, shaking its bull-head groggily. Before it could do anything else, the big-eared man shouted again in that strange pretend-language, and the beast roared in pain, and then exploded, splattering everything in sight with bits and chunky things.

Gertha frowned at the mess. This was going to be difficult to clean up. With another sigh, she went into the house to fetch cleaning supplies.

As Gertha began mopping up the bits of man-goat-bull that were smeared all over her house, she heard the strange men in the road talking.

"So… magic, eh?" the shorter, darker-skinned man said casually. "That's new, is it?"

"Not really, I just never mentioned it before now," the dark-haired man who had exploded the man-goat-bull said just as casually.

"But… but…" the curly-haired tall man stammered, eyes gone wild and panicked. "But…."

"Don't worry about it, Leon," the blond man patted 'Leon' on the shoulder reassuringly. "Just don't mention it in front of anyone, especially my father."

"That's what we do!" the good-looking man, who had not spoken yet, said cheerfully.

The tallest man regarded the monster-exploder for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. "If Gwaine, Lancelot and Arthur trust you, then so do I."

"Well, that's good then," the monster-exploder grinned broadly.

"Do you think we could go back to Camelot now?" the last man asked plaintively. "I'm covered in bits of… what was that thing, again?"

"Gaius said it was called a Dusios," the Dusios-exploder said promptly.

"Ah. Well, I'm covered in Dusios-bits, and they don't smell very good," the last man continued. "Shall we go back?"

The other men all nodded, and began walking back the way they came.

For generations to come, this day would be used by the older folk of Ipswich to demonstrate why people from outside Ipswich weren't to be trusted, and how Frederick and Mabel had _just_ put new shutters up, and wasn't it lucky that Mabel had been visiting her mother, and why young people these days had no respect for their elders, and that things were always much better when they were younger.

Such is life.

…

A/N: WELL. That was not what I was expecting. I found the _Dusios_ online, on Monstropedia-dot-org. You may search it if you'd like a picture. I'd put a link up, but it won't let me. And yes, this is short, but it's mostly to tide you over until I figure out what I want to happen next. Now the Knights know, at least! Maybe Morgana will be next… that one will be dark! Please review and let me know how this was!


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